I know very few people will admit to this, but I have heard of people do it to try to undo a bad rating.

I was wondering if anyone here has bought their own tracks in order to increase interest in their songs (e.g. people scrolling through thinking “wow, this already has 8 sales in just one day…. must be a great song” type thing)?

If you have please share your experience, I’m interested to know if it works (as you can see from the low sales on my account, I have never done this)

I already thougth about that if this would work on AJ, since I know somebody buying his tracks on iTunes…
I can imagine it wouldn’t work with the same account. But most of all I think, that could be a expensive thing and I doubt if that would generate much more sales, except you buy A LOT of the same track, not just a few, but that would be like gambling I guess. One thing I’m sure about: A catchier track will sell much better than a bad one I would try to promote .
I really didn’t do it either (I don’t have big numbers sold of a single track either (yet, I hope!) and I don’t plan to buy my tracks in the future. Rather a top-seller vh author would pick up the track and promote it by just using it!

I was actually quite vocal about this on the forum a few months back, at a time when the ratings system for AJ authors was quite a sensitive subject – which, of course it now seems they have ‘fixed’.

I have indeed had to purchase my own tracks on several occasions to get the rating back up to five stars. I did this mostly for aesthetic reasons, as I strongly feel that anything under a five star rating can make a potential customer looking at long lists of tracks, just skip it, and move onto something else without even giving it a listen.

What bothered me most, was that there was never any justification for the lower ratings. Was it a quality issue? This was made worse, especially if the file even received compliments from the reviewers during the review stage. And why on earth why somebody give it a poor rating, if they heard the track in it’s entirety via the preview? Baffles me. But I’m going over old ground here.

It’s an interesting point you’ve raised however, because I’m sure lots of authors here have at least thought about the possibility of buying their own tracks for the sake of promotion. One might even look at it as a form of investment. For example, there’s been a few occasions where I’ve had the same track sell maybe 10 or 11 times in a week, and I know that if I buy just a couple of those myself, I will most likely end up on that ‘popular files’ list, thus increasing file exposure to the public. But it’s always a bit of gamble, and of course it costs to do so. Tempting, but rather not!

Also, I don’t think it’s a particularly ‘organic’ way to boost sales of a track. People would soon cotton on if a sub-standard track suddenly had 20 or 30 sales in a week. It would probably be a rather short lived and expensive investment.

Music quality and usability will always be the best form of track promotion.

Not a stock song, but along the same line of thinking, there was a story not so long ago about an electronic music artist (or maybe it was a group) who used stolen credit card numbers to purchase their track or tracks to help boost it in the charts on certain websites (where dj’s would purchase). Subsequently, since it was charted, people must have thought it was “good” and it generated more sales. As consumers, we’re a little silly like that. Take it for what it’s worth.

If we look at the pages of the popular tracks, we will see to get there today, it is necessary that one and the same track was sold 11 times. To buy at 11 times the track that costs 14 dollars, you have to pay 14 * 11 = $ 154 for 1 week. The probability that in the next week, you will return the money, very small, as stated above – is a gamble. To file actually has to sell well, it is necessary to do this adventure for 2 – 3 weeks, and yet the fact that the work would sell well. I believe that buying your own files is a gamble, which I do not want to play

@ AlumoAudio. Yeah, thank god they fixed that awful ratings system. I had heard of music labels doing something along the lines actually, they would buy the albums from the CD shops BEFORE shipping them so they would be listed as purchased but they wouldn’t spend on the transportation fee. That way their artists could be shot straight into gold or platinum hence raising their billboard rank and their exposure.

I always imagined that someone with enough money could buy massive amounts consistently and increase their exposure, if their music was more than passable I think maybe it might work. Of course envato wouldn’t complain, more money for them right?

It wouldn’t work for people who come here looking for composers but I think it might work for more casual customers.

Haven’t you ever seen a real crappy and useless file that hits the popular files page with unrealistic amount of weekly buys? It’s like paying for advertising to get a little exposure. But if you’re really not good no exposure will help you… The phenomena is so common it’s even become a meme: